Carlos Fuentes, the acclaimed Mexican novelist and essayist, will be appearing at the Hay festival, heading up a line-up of treats for fans of Spanish-language literature. The former diplomat who spearheaded the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s will be talking about his latest book, The Eagle's Throne.
Fuentes is just one of a number of writers and thinkers who will be giving Hay a uniquely Spanish-speaking flavour this year. The festival will also welcome three writers at the forefront of the new wave of Spanish language fiction: Carmen Posadas, Rafael Reig and Jorge Franco. Introduced by the cultural editor of El Pais, they will discuss crime writing. Uruguayan-born Posadas is the author of Little Indiscretions, which has been described as Almodovar's take on Agatha Christie, Spaniard Reig's Blood on the Saddle is a crime fantasy set in Madrid and Colombian Franco is the author of a bestselling thriller, Rosario Tijeras.
You can find the article here
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
La Mujer de Mi Hermano directed by Ricardo de Montreuil
Director Ricardo de Montreuil and Peruvian screenwriter Jaime Bayly, who adapted his popular novel, have created an oddly unsexy melodrama in which every supposedly shocking revelation (rape, incest, homosexuality, pedophilia) is treated with the same blithe shrug of recognition. It's numbing, especially with the film's deadly serious mood.
American and Latin American soap operas and telenovelas do much with seriocomic tones and livelier acting. With Santiago, Chile, locations standing for the Mexico City setting and most of the action transpiring in Zoe and Ignacio's mausoleum-like house, an architectural showpiece made of gray cement and glass, ''La Mujer de Mi Hermano" seems to be happening not between a woman and two men, but between the pages of a shelter magazine.
You can find the review here
From their opening shots of floating insects and leaves in a lap pool, director Ricardo de Montreuil and his cinematographer give "La Mujer" a gloss intended to push against the muck of the onscreen emotions and also provide an alternative aesthetic to some of the grittier films coming from Mexico and Latin America.
What first-time Peruvian director Montreuil has delivered is a stylish soap opera that casts cultural dramas as melodrama.
Author Jaime Bayly, also Peruvian, adapted his novel and moved its steamy action to Mexico City. But geography doesn't much matter. "La Mujer's" characters are sealed in their habits, courting interpersonal disaster.
You can find the review here
Ricardo De Montreuil films Peruvian author Jaime Bayly's novel with his tongue half-in-cheek. The bombshells delivered here have the punch of BIG soap opera moments, but he tosses them off as if this is life-goes-on normal in this airless world of wealth and sex and unhappiness.
Cardona has the tricky job of playing a guy who could be Zoe's salvation, or her undoing. He's very good at maintaining the mystery of Gonzalo -- maybe he's a romantic, maybe he's a heel, or maybe he has motives we can't begin to fathom. Meier has the trickier job of playing a man who isn't as interested in the gorgeous Mori as we, quite naturally, think he should be.
And Mori underplays the victim/cheater/manipulator with a certain charm, if not cunning. The third act's surprises don't leave her with enough to play, frankly. Those surprises aren't fully explained or explored enough to give us a full idea of what they mean to the three leads.
The film's resolution feels abrupt in the extreme.
You can find the review here
American and Latin American soap operas and telenovelas do much with seriocomic tones and livelier acting. With Santiago, Chile, locations standing for the Mexico City setting and most of the action transpiring in Zoe and Ignacio's mausoleum-like house, an architectural showpiece made of gray cement and glass, ''La Mujer de Mi Hermano" seems to be happening not between a woman and two men, but between the pages of a shelter magazine.
You can find the review here
From their opening shots of floating insects and leaves in a lap pool, director Ricardo de Montreuil and his cinematographer give "La Mujer" a gloss intended to push against the muck of the onscreen emotions and also provide an alternative aesthetic to some of the grittier films coming from Mexico and Latin America.
What first-time Peruvian director Montreuil has delivered is a stylish soap opera that casts cultural dramas as melodrama.
Author Jaime Bayly, also Peruvian, adapted his novel and moved its steamy action to Mexico City. But geography doesn't much matter. "La Mujer's" characters are sealed in their habits, courting interpersonal disaster.
You can find the review here
Ricardo De Montreuil films Peruvian author Jaime Bayly's novel with his tongue half-in-cheek. The bombshells delivered here have the punch of BIG soap opera moments, but he tosses them off as if this is life-goes-on normal in this airless world of wealth and sex and unhappiness.
Cardona has the tricky job of playing a guy who could be Zoe's salvation, or her undoing. He's very good at maintaining the mystery of Gonzalo -- maybe he's a romantic, maybe he's a heel, or maybe he has motives we can't begin to fathom. Meier has the trickier job of playing a man who isn't as interested in the gorgeous Mori as we, quite naturally, think he should be.
And Mori underplays the victim/cheater/manipulator with a certain charm, if not cunning. The third act's surprises don't leave her with enough to play, frankly. Those surprises aren't fully explained or explored enough to give us a full idea of what they mean to the three leads.
The film's resolution feels abrupt in the extreme.
You can find the review here
Seeing by Jose Saramago
Sometimes a novel comes along that is terrifying only because the reader can't decide why he should be scared. Jose Saramago's latest political allegory Seeing
is just such a tale.
The Portuguese Nobel Prize laureate has again produced a singular work of dark humour and near absurdity, one that raises disturbing questions about the nature of democracy and the relationship between the government and the governed.
Taking place four years after the events described in his novel Blindness, Saramago's Seeing opens on a rainy election day in the unnamed capital of an unnamed country.
The voting turns out badly for the incumbent party. Although it wins the elections, more than 70 per cent of the ballots cast are blank. After a second round of elections produces more than 80 per cent blanks, the government declares a state of emergency.
Having lost its political legitimacy but without having been elected out of office, the government must decide how to deal with this paradoxical situation.
You can find the review here
Saramago's prose is still a wordslide, hardly any full stops or paragraphs to block its flow, with an energy that carries you through the curious asides, the bits of writerly intervention - usually. It demands constant attention; even in an interrogation scene, a mid-paragraph comma may be all that announces a quite new speaker. It's as though we were listening intently to a fireside performance, naive and wise all at once, which is a high moral claim: the fable maker, who sometimes mumbles and sometimes does voices. But we're also reading a text by a very self-conscious writer, who will break the spine of a book - this book, in fact - with a long reflection on how he's got no idea at all of how to end it.
This has produced wonderful stories where the written word is at least as powerful as anything mundane; Saramago was a literary critic, a cultural editor, long before he made a living out of novels. In All The Names we meet a bureaucrat who hoards documents, and who follows a paper trail to the woman who fascinates him. In The History of the Siege of Lisbon, a proofreader has the power to change history. The central character in Saramago's glorious The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis is one of the alternate identities of the poet Fernando Pessoa: so Saramago breathes life into someone else's literary invention. And in his gospel, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, the old atheist is playing with another book: the New Testament.
There's a context of the mind to all these books, and a sense of the physical which absorbs you: Saramago does rain like no other European writer. In many cases he's engaging with Portugal's very odd and sad history: what seems magical may be actual fact. But in the past decade or so, in book after book, he's been throwing all this away. The Saramago of the years since he won the Nobel has been hungry for followers, not just readers.
Me, I think the rot set in with the oddly old-fashioned fable, The Stone Raft, in which all of Iberia drifts away from Europe to find its own place in the world. The notion's worked out ingeniously, but it's all too obviously a big idea on which Saramago grafts some people and some action. He wants a Portugal which can afford to be separate, away from Europe and America, a notion which would have cheered the heart of the old dictator Salazar - as long as he didn't read too carefully.
Saramago was in exile by now, a cross old man in Lanzarote, distant from the Lisbon streets and the grand monuments of Portugal. The distance showed. In Blindness, a whole city slowly goes blind, only one woman left with sight, and the streets fill with crime and fear and anarchy; it's as high concept as any George Romero zombie movie, to which it comes embarrassingly close at times. But sometimes, when the story is anchored to streets you can imagine, ruins you know, you find yourself crying.
Now, in Seeing, we have the rest of that story. It's set in Lisbon, obviously, and in Portugal, more or less; but Saramago doesn't want to say so. He's gone away somewhere nameless, non-specific. The characters, if that's the word, are called Prime Minister and President and Interior Minister, Superintendent, Inspector and Sergeant. They make good abstract nouns.
There's no passion from a writer who was once most passionate. Saramago can't have heroes any more because he has no hope. He has a kind of heroine - the one woman who never went blind in Blindness, who did away with a rapist nobody else could see - but she's there to accept her victimhood in a proper, stoic way. And this is ironic since he's covertly arguing that others should do as his city does, follow Lenin to the barricades one more time against bourgeois democracy, and the only reason he can imagine is habit.
You can find the review here
is just such a tale. The Portuguese Nobel Prize laureate has again produced a singular work of dark humour and near absurdity, one that raises disturbing questions about the nature of democracy and the relationship between the government and the governed.
Taking place four years after the events described in his novel Blindness
, Saramago's Seeing opens on a rainy election day in the unnamed capital of an unnamed country. The voting turns out badly for the incumbent party. Although it wins the elections, more than 70 per cent of the ballots cast are blank. After a second round of elections produces more than 80 per cent blanks, the government declares a state of emergency.
Having lost its political legitimacy but without having been elected out of office, the government must decide how to deal with this paradoxical situation.
You can find the review here
Saramago's prose is still a wordslide, hardly any full stops or paragraphs to block its flow, with an energy that carries you through the curious asides, the bits of writerly intervention - usually. It demands constant attention; even in an interrogation scene, a mid-paragraph comma may be all that announces a quite new speaker. It's as though we were listening intently to a fireside performance, naive and wise all at once, which is a high moral claim: the fable maker, who sometimes mumbles and sometimes does voices. But we're also reading a text by a very self-conscious writer, who will break the spine of a book - this book, in fact - with a long reflection on how he's got no idea at all of how to end it.
This has produced wonderful stories where the written word is at least as powerful as anything mundane; Saramago was a literary critic, a cultural editor, long before he made a living out of novels. In All The Names
we meet a bureaucrat who hoards documents, and who follows a paper trail to the woman who fascinates him. In The History of the Siege of Lisbon, a proofreader has the power to change history. The central character in Saramago's glorious The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis is one of the alternate identities of the poet Fernando Pessoa: so Saramago breathes life into someone else's literary invention. And in his gospel, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, the old atheist is playing with another book: the New Testament. There's a context of the mind to all these books, and a sense of the physical which absorbs you: Saramago does rain like no other European writer. In many cases he's engaging with Portugal's very odd and sad history: what seems magical may be actual fact. But in the past decade or so, in book after book, he's been throwing all this away. The Saramago of the years since he won the Nobel has been hungry for followers, not just readers.
Me, I think the rot set in with the oddly old-fashioned fable, The Stone Raft
, in which all of Iberia drifts away from Europe to find its own place in the world. The notion's worked out ingeniously, but it's all too obviously a big idea on which Saramago grafts some people and some action. He wants a Portugal which can afford to be separate, away from Europe and America, a notion which would have cheered the heart of the old dictator Salazar - as long as he didn't read too carefully. Saramago was in exile by now, a cross old man in Lanzarote
, distant from the Lisbon streets and the grand monuments of Portugal. The distance showed. In Blindness, a whole city slowly goes blind, only one woman left with sight, and the streets fill with crime and fear and anarchy; it's as high concept as any George Romero zombie movie, to which it comes embarrassingly close at times. But sometimes, when the story is anchored to streets you can imagine, ruins you know, you find yourself crying. Now, in Seeing
, we have the rest of that story. It's set in Lisbon, obviously, and in Portugal, more or less; but Saramago doesn't want to say so. He's gone away somewhere nameless, non-specific. The characters, if that's the word, are called Prime Minister and President and Interior Minister, Superintendent, Inspector and Sergeant. They make good abstract nouns. There's no passion from a writer who was once most passionate. Saramago can't have heroes any more because he has no hope. He has a kind of heroine - the one woman who never went blind in Blindness
, who did away with a rapist nobody else could see - but she's there to accept her victimhood in a proper, stoic way. And this is ironic since he's covertly arguing that others should do as his city does, follow Lenin to the barricades one more time against bourgeois democracy, and the only reason he can imagine is habit.You can find the review here
Friday, May 12, 2006
Y de Repente un Angel by Jaime Bayly
Considered by some as controversial and contentious, Peruvian writer Jaime Bayly shed those adjectives Tuesday to present a socially committed story of friendship at Bogota Book Fair.
Under the title "Y de Repente un Angel", the outstanding writer makes literature of the personal story of an illiterate servant of his family who was sold by her mother into slavery.
Although she never read a book, Mercedes is a smart woman, the author assured. "When she told me about her life I felt she was a novel character and I decided to pay homage to her through literature," he added
The 244-page volume refers to the friendship between Mercedes and her new master, a young and rich writer who intends to change her life.
You can find the article here
Under the title "Y de Repente un Angel", the outstanding writer makes literature of the personal story of an illiterate servant of his family who was sold by her mother into slavery.
Although she never read a book, Mercedes is a smart woman, the author assured. "When she told me about her life I felt she was a novel character and I decided to pay homage to her through literature," he added
The 244-page volume refers to the friendship between Mercedes and her new master, a young and rich writer who intends to change her life.
You can find the article here
La Mujer de Mi Hermano directed by Ricardo de Montreuil
Director Ricardo de Montreuil and screenwriter Jaime Bayly (working from his own novel) stress visuals: Zoe and Ignacio’s cold house, Gonzalo’s sloppy attire and artwork, and the life of routine Zoe and Ignacio have built together. The plot’s progression doesn’t go beyond this simplicity, emphasizing major plot points instead of showing what Zoe learns along the way. OK, so she has sex in a hotel room and goes skinny dipping in her pool. Well, so do a lot of people. What else is there? Well, nothing much. Revealing dialogue may be a relief from the opulent indifference that weighs the movie down like an anchor, but it doesn’t get us any closer to caring about these people.
You can find the review here
You can find the review here
Thursday, May 11, 2006
The Eagle's Throne by Carlos Fuentes
In Carlos Fuentes' new novel, The Eagle's Throne, it is the year 2020. America has knocked out all of Mexico's communications—there are no phones, fax, or e-mail. Washington made its move in a fit of pique over Mexico's refusal to lower oil prices and its demand that the United States end its military occupation of Colombia. This is the context for a story about presidential succession—a potentially timely subject, as Mexicans will elect a new president in July.
This is a juicy setup for Fuentes, a chance for that sophisticated, passionate novel of the paso doble between the United States and Mexico that he was born to write. Fuentes, Mexico's most prominent novelist, is also an essayist, dramatist, professor, and former student of international law. The son of a diplomat, he was raised partly in Washington and served as Mexican ambassador to Paris. He is a longtime, if not particularly original, critic of American ideas and influence, and in 2004 he published a book of essays called Contra Bush, which is just what you think it is. Always a more interesting novelist than essayist, Fuentes could have used the situation he has imagined in The Eagle's Throne to probe the love/hate relationship Mexicans have with the United States. Or, well-known proponent of Mexico's democratization that he is, he could have explored Mexico's second modern transformation as he dramatized the workings of presidential politics. In his best novel, The Death of Artemio Cruz, written in 1962, Fuentes portrayed the gradual corruption of Mexico's revolution a century ago. Today, Mexico's emergence from 71 years of dictatorship—democratic, but hobbled by the habits of old—again offer him a rich subject.
You can find the review here
, it is the year 2020. America has knocked out all of Mexico's communications—there are no phones, fax, or e-mail. Washington made its move in a fit of pique over Mexico's refusal to lower oil prices and its demand that the United States end its military occupation of Colombia. This is the context for a story about presidential succession—a potentially timely subject, as Mexicans will elect a new president in July. This is a juicy setup for Fuentes, a chance for that sophisticated, passionate novel of the paso doble between the United States and Mexico that he was born to write. Fuentes, Mexico's most prominent novelist, is also an essayist, dramatist, professor, and former student of international law. The son of a diplomat, he was raised partly in Washington and served as Mexican ambassador to Paris. He is a longtime, if not particularly original, critic of American ideas and influence, and in 2004 he published a book of essays called Contra Bush, which is just what you think it is. Always a more interesting novelist than essayist, Fuentes could have used the situation he has imagined in The Eagle's Throne
to probe the love/hate relationship Mexicans have with the United States. Or, well-known proponent of Mexico's democratization that he is, he could have explored Mexico's second modern transformation as he dramatized the workings of presidential politics. In his best novel, The Death of Artemio Cruz, written in 1962, Fuentes portrayed the gradual corruption of Mexico's revolution a century ago. Today, Mexico's emergence from 71 years of dictatorship—democratic, but hobbled by the habits of old—again offer him a rich subject.You can find the review here
Interview with Jose Saramago
The architecture of José Saramago's purpose-built library, as it rises from a parched hillside on his adopted island of Lanzarote, creates the impression of a modern cathedral. Sunlight splinters through high, narrow windows of opaque glass that stretch the full two storeys; the clean, white walls and cool flagstones contribute to a sense of hushed reverence in the presence of so many volumes, ancient and modern, in so many languages. Here is a shrine to literature, an alternative religion for a Portuguese Nobel laureate, who left his homeland 14 years ago in protest at the government's censorship of his novel, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (it vetoed its submission for the European Literature Prize on the grounds that it was offensive to Catholics).
It takes some effort to believe that Saramago is about to turn 84 - not just because of his vivid physical presence, his barely-lined face and the quickness of his eyes and hands when he talks, but also because of his extraordinary productivity.
Although Seeing is published this week in English translation, he has produced another book in the meantime; Las Intermitencias de la Muerte was published last autumn in Portugal, Spain and Latin America (his Spanish wife, Pilar del Rio, translates his books as he goes along so that they can be published simultaneously for his large Spanish readership), and he is now working on an autobiography entitled Pequenas Memorias (Little Memories), about his childhood in rural Portugal.
But the image of the venerable novelist shut away in his island retreat, disengaged from the world, could not be further from the truth. Saramago is about to leave Lanzarote for two months of travelling, as he does most years, in part to promote the new novel, but mainly to speak at conferences and presentations on politics and sociology. 'Most of it doesn't have much to do with literature,' he explains, 'but this is a part of my life that I consider very important, not to limit myself to literary work; I try to be involved in the world to the best of my strengths and abilities.' Still a member of the Communist party, Saramago is a vocal opponent of globalisation and many of his best known novels have taken the form of political allegory. Does he believe that the artist is obliged to take on a political role? 'It isn't a role,' he says, almost sharply.
You can find the review here
(it vetoed its submission for the European Literature Prize on the grounds that it was offensive to Catholics).It takes some effort to believe that Saramago is about to turn 84 - not just because of his vivid physical presence, his barely-lined face and the quickness of his eyes and hands when he talks, but also because of his extraordinary productivity.
Although Seeing
is published this week in English translation, he has produced another book in the meantime; Las Intermitencias de la Muerte was published last autumn in Portugal, Spain and Latin America (his Spanish wife, Pilar del Rio, translates his books as he goes along so that they can be published simultaneously for his large Spanish readership), and he is now working on an autobiography entitled Pequenas Memorias (Little Memories), about his childhood in rural Portugal.But the image of the venerable novelist shut away in his island retreat, disengaged from the world, could not be further from the truth. Saramago is about to leave Lanzarote for two months of travelling, as he does most years, in part to promote the new novel, but mainly to speak at conferences and presentations on politics and sociology. 'Most of it doesn't have much to do with literature,' he explains, 'but this is a part of my life that I consider very important, not to limit myself to literary work; I try to be involved in the world to the best of my strengths and abilities.' Still a member of the Communist party, Saramago is a vocal opponent of globalisation and many of his best known novels have taken the form of political allegory. Does he believe that the artist is obliged to take on a political role? 'It isn't a role,' he says, almost sharply.
You can find the review here
The Heretic by Miguel Delibes
Visitors to Valladolid, located north of Madrid, can follow a route through the city that is dedicated to sites associated with Cipriano Salcedo, a 16th-century merchant who was swept up in the fires of the Inquisition. Stations on the route include the old Jewish quarter, where the Salcedo family's warehouse would have been located, and the Plaza Mayor, where the auto-da-fé was held that condemned Salcedo and other presumed Protestant heretics. As they move among the remnants of Valladolid's former royal splendor, tourists can consider how Spain might have developed had the Counter-Reformation not been so successful in suppressing the nascent Protestant heresy--or what might have happened had there been more men like Salcedo.
There were people like Salcedo among those burned in Valladolid, but Salcedo himself is a fictional character in The Heretic, Miguel Delibes' 1998 novel, which was recently translated into English. Though little known in the U.S., Delibes is a member of Spain's Royal Academy and a winner, along with Vargas Lllosa, Cabrera Infante and Alvaro Mutis, of the Cervantes Prize.
Salcedo, born to wealth though not to the nobility, survives a loveless father, a mad wife and a liaison with his former wet nurse to develop into an astute and innovative businessman. Delibes' account of the Salcedo's vertical integration of the rabbit-coat industry--How many writers can boast of sustaining interest in a subject like that?--fleshes out Salcedo in much the same way that detailed manufacturing processes and financial transactions provide the background in Balzac's fictions. In terms of character, a contract can be as revealing as a seduction. Fortunately, this book has both.
You can find the review here
There were people like Salcedo among those burned in Valladolid, but Salcedo himself is a fictional character in The Heretic
, Miguel Delibes' 1998 novel, which was recently translated into English. Though little known in the U.S., Delibes is a member of Spain's Royal Academy and a winner, along with Vargas Lllosa, Cabrera Infante and Alvaro Mutis, of the Cervantes Prize. Salcedo, born to wealth though not to the nobility, survives a loveless father, a mad wife and a liaison with his former wet nurse to develop into an astute and innovative businessman. Delibes' account of the Salcedo's vertical integration of the rabbit-coat industry--How many writers can boast of sustaining interest in a subject like that?--fleshes out Salcedo in much the same way that detailed manufacturing processes and financial transactions provide the background in Balzac's fictions. In terms of character, a contract can be as revealing as a seduction. Fortunately, this book has both.
You can find the review here
Friday, April 28, 2006
Interview with Carlos Fuentes
In the new political novel by preeminent Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican bishop counsels a general to forgive his enemies. "I can't," the general replies. "I haven't got any left. I've killed them all."
On the eve of Mexico's July presidential elections, Fuentes is treating U.S. readers to his fictional sendup of Mexico's baroque political baggage, from the historic mestizo nation that arose from the Mexican Revolution to the murders and political intrigues that marked the end of the seven-decade rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. "The Eagle's Throne" opens in the year 2020, and U.S. President Condoleezza Rice's administration has shut down Mexican satellite communications in reprisal for Mexico's rising oil prices and its opposition to U.S. troops in Colombia.
"This is a satire. Satire knows no pity," Fuentes said last week, sitting under a window that spills soft morning light on his silver temples and aquiline features, and rolling up the sleeves of his white cotton shirt. "It is a book that seeks not to prophesize, but to exorcise. I hope that 'The Eagle's Throne' doesn't happen. But I fear it will be a prophecy, because exorcism can become prophecy."
You can find the review here
On the eve of Mexico's July presidential elections, Fuentes is treating U.S. readers to his fictional sendup of Mexico's baroque political baggage, from the historic mestizo nation that arose from the Mexican Revolution to the murders and political intrigues that marked the end of the seven-decade rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. "The Eagle's Throne
" opens in the year 2020, and U.S. President Condoleezza Rice's administration has shut down Mexican satellite communications in reprisal for Mexico's rising oil prices and its opposition to U.S. troops in Colombia."This is a satire. Satire knows no pity," Fuentes said last week, sitting under a window that spills soft morning light on his silver temples and aquiline features, and rolling up the sleeves of his white cotton shirt. "It is a book that seeks not to prophesize, but to exorcise. I hope that 'The Eagle's Throne
' doesn't happen. But I fear it will be a prophecy, because exorcism can become prophecy."You can find the review here
Laura Esquivel on La Malinche
Her new book, "Malinche," follows the relationship between La Malinche, or Malinalli as she is called in the book, and Spanish explorer Hernan Cortez, who uses Malinalli as his translator in his quest to overthrow the Aztec emperor Moctezuma and then tosses her aside after conquering Mexico. Hurt and disillusioned, Malinalli discovers true love with Cortez's lieutenant and eventually even forgives Cortez.
Like her previous books, "Malinche" is full of love and longing, with the same plain language that makes for a quick read but at times betrays the author's origins in television.
The book is also something new for Esquivel, serving as a political and historical text. As Cortez's translator, La Malinche has often been called the ultimate traitor, yet her role in Mexican history is more nuanced, Esquivel maintains.
"She is a person who we have yet to judge fairly," Esquivel says, adding that it wasn't hard to imagine why La Malinche helped Cortez. It was about cycles.
For the Aztecs, "there were always cycles that ended, and then came a struggle and a new cycle," Esquivel says. "A woman, in this time, being a slave, would have hoped that a change was coming."
You can find the review here
," follows the relationship between La Malinche, or Malinalli as she is called in the book, and Spanish explorer Hernan Cortez, who uses Malinalli as his translator in his quest to overthrow the Aztec emperor Moctezuma and then tosses her aside after conquering Mexico. Hurt and disillusioned, Malinalli discovers true love with Cortez's lieutenant and eventually even forgives Cortez.Like her previous books, "Malinche
" is full of love and longing, with the same plain language that makes for a quick read but at times betrays the author's origins in television.The book is also something new for Esquivel, serving as a political and historical text. As Cortez's translator, La Malinche has often been called the ultimate traitor, yet her role in Mexican history is more nuanced, Esquivel maintains.
"She is a person who we have yet to judge fairly," Esquivel says, adding that it wasn't hard to imagine why La Malinche helped Cortez. It was about cycles.
For the Aztecs, "there were always cycles that ended, and then came a struggle and a new cycle," Esquivel says. "A woman, in this time, being a slave, would have hoped that a change was coming."
You can find the review here
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Alfaguara Spanish-language literary prize
Peruvian author Santiago Roncagliolo received Spain's Alfaguara Spanish-language literary prize on Monday (April 24) for his novel Abril Rojo, or Red April, which tells of life in his country under the government of former president Alberto Fujimori.
The novel, a detective story set within a political background, unfolds in the Peru of the early 2000s when the government, led by Japanese-born Fujimori, clashed with the hard left Shining Path guerrilla insurgency.
Roncagliolo, 30 years old, is the youngest author ever to obtain the Alfaguara award.
You can find the review here
, or Red April, which tells of life in his country under the government of former president Alberto Fujimori.The novel, a detective story set within a political background, unfolds in the Peru of the early 2000s when the government, led by Japanese-born Fujimori, clashed with the hard left Shining Path guerrilla insurgency.
Roncagliolo, 30 years old, is the youngest author ever to obtain the Alfaguara award.
You can find the review here
Giovanna Mezzogiorno in "Love in the Time of Cholera"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)